Battlefield 3 at 2560x1440 High or Ultra - which card?

gee3000 · 25 Mar 2012 at 22:07

I bought a MSI GTX 570 TwinFrozr III OC a few months ago and it ran great at x1200 res, but then I grabbed a Dell U2711 monitor literally a few weeks later finding the 570 was unable keep up at its max native res (2560x1440). Dropping it down to 1080p makes it look like utter crap.

Wanting to replace my 570 with either a single or dual cards to allow me to play at native res with high or ultra settings - any recommendations?

555BUK · 25 Mar 2012 at 22:15

7970 or GTX680 are best bets, but even thes will struggle to maintain 60fps all of the time on Ultra @ 2560x1440. Of the two, BF3 slightly favors the 680. but either card is a lot of money for just one game.

If you can "make do" with a cheaper card the 7950, or perhaps even a used GTX580 3GB may be sufficient gaming.

Vir · 25 Mar 2012 at 22:18

gee3000 said:
I bought a MSI GTX 570 TwinFrozr III OC a few months ago and it ran great at x1200 res, but then I grabbed a Dell U2711 monitor literally a few weeks later finding the 570 was unable keep up at its max native res (2560x1440). Dropping it down to 1080p makes it look like utter crap.

Wanting to replace my 570 with either a single or dual cards to allow me to play at native res with high or ultra settings - any recommendations?

I'm kind of in the sameboat, fps is ok with sli gtx 480 but not enough vram @ 2560x1440...

I think im gonna wait for a 4gb gtx 680 or pickup a gtx 580 3gb (maybe sli later). If you like amd a 7950 3gb or maybe xfire could be nice

TheRealDeal · 25 Mar 2012 at 22:19

You are on the borderline here. Its basically add in another gtx570 and be memory limited with the settings you can have or go for a gtx680/7970 and overclock. The sli gtx570 will give good frames as long as you dont really want to use anti-aliasing or atleast keep it low. The other options i listed will need overclocked but wont suffer from low memory.

If you want full on settings in every game then its 7950cf/7970cf/gtx680sli.

Mr Krugga · 25 Mar 2012 at 23:20

My slightly OCed 580 does the job just fine with High preset at 2560x1440.

lrlcr · 25 Mar 2012 at 23:23

Buy a second and run without any aa.

Vir · 26 Mar 2012 at 06:50

Unless you've already got a 2.5gb gtx 570 like lrlcr has i seriously recommend you don't get another gtx 570 as the vram is not enough and will introduce stutter. It does on my 1.5gb gtx 480 sli. So be warned.

rare · 26 Mar 2012 at 08:38

My 7970 is running BF3 with everything on ultra except mesh and shadows on high, no FSAA, 16xAF, SSAO with v sync on, and is sitting at 60fps for 99% of e time. It runs it really really well and this is at 2560X1440.

Everything to ultra and FSAA sees this drop to around 40fps.

You don't need a pair if your willing to either sacrifice FPS or a few settings.

barjoysee · 26 Mar 2012 at 09:08

I'm looking to sell of my 2 3Gb 580's in SLI as they are struggling at times at 2560x1600 I hit 17fps min on Caspain for example on full Ultra preset

..
I want to keep at 60fps min at ultra preset at 2560x1600 but I'm not sure even 3x 680's will do it (what I'm thinking of buying if I sell my 580's). :confused:

Vir · 26 Mar 2012 at 09:10

barjoysee said:
I'm looking to sell of my 2 3Gb 580's in SLI as they are struggling at times at 2560x1600 I hit 17fps min on Caspain for example on full Ultra preset ..
I want to keep at 60fps min at ultra preset at 2560x1600 but I'm not sure even 3x 680's will do it (what I'm thinking of buying if I sell my 580's).

Wtf? I'm really suprised to hear this. That doesn't look normal to me tbh

What do other people think?
But if you want to get rid of them I'll buy one

Macro · 26 Mar 2012 at 09:18

I'm running it at 2560x1440, ultra with everything on but it took dual 7970s to do it. Having said that, crossfire was painless and although buying to of thenbuggers cost a fortune I expect it'll now be able to cope with pretty much anything thrown at it for the next two years much like the 5970 I upgraded from.

Single card 7970 or GTX 680 performance is a bit of a let down so I gave up on hoping for a single card solution for 1440p this time around. You can do it with some compromises, but the brutal truth is for 2560x1440 you need dual cards with >2gb each if you want to game at that res with no compromise.

barjoysee · 26 Mar 2012 at 09:35

Vir said:
Wtf? I'm really suprised to hear this. That doesn't look normal to me tbh What do other people think?
But if you want to get rid of them I'll buy one

To be fair I should have added the fact that I was running at 2.6 Ghz on my 920 at that point though even at 4.0Ghz it wouldn't be much better ! I had a screen grab somewhere I'd upload it if I can find it.

My Memory usage at Ultra preset is around 2150Mb :eek:

So I am a little worried the green party is a bit low next to the red team. !

barjoysee · 26 Mar 2012 at 09:41

Athanor said:
I'm running it at 2560x1440, ultra with everything on but it took dual 7970s to do it. Having said that, crossfire was painless and although buying to of thenbuggers cost a fortune I expect it'll now be able to cope with pretty much anything thrown at it for the next two years much like the 5970 I upgraded from.

Single card 7970 or GTX 680 performance is a bit of a let down so I gave up on hoping for a single card solution for 1440p this time around. You can do it with some compromises, but the brutal truth is for 2560x1440 you need dual cards with >2gb each if you want to game at that res with no compromise.

I haven't ruled out going back to ATI either can I ask you two quick questions then I take it you are saying you don't go below 60fps then at any point on ultra preset ?

Second question On my previous crossfired 5870's I used to get black screen problems in Battlefied bad company 2 which is why I decided to go with the green team this time.

Now on B3 on Firestorm I sometimes get it were all the bushes flicker in on and off texture wise. Do you get any graphics issues on your 7970's in any of the maps such as flickering ?

DamoTourettes · 26 Mar 2012 at 10:18

Very interesting circumstance with your thoughts on SLI GTX 580's. I've just built a machine here at work for a guy with an EVGA SR-2 with 2 x overclocked Xeons @ 4.2Ghz along with 2 x EVGA GTX 580 3GB Ultra Classified @ 900Mhz, and didn't have any problems - buttery smooth. You sure you're not having issues with SLI or drivers or something? Sure you're actually using both cards in the game? I was getting consistent 65FPS @ 2560x1600 with everything maxed out - HBAO, 4xMSAA, 16x post processing, ambient occlusion, everything Ultra etc.

Marine-RX179 · 26 Mar 2012 at 10:43

barjoysee said:
To be fair I should have added the fact that I was running at 2.6 Ghz on my 920 at that point though even at 4.0Ghz it wouldn't be much better ! I had a screen grab somewhere I'd upload it if I can find it.

My Memory usage at Ultra preset is around 2150Mb So I am a little worried the green party is a bit low next to the red team. !

I'm pretty certain that the odd dips here and there on the frame rate is more to do with your i7 920 at stock speed. Have you even check what GPU usage are your two GTX580 3GB is at when the frame rate dipped? You do realise high-end graphic setup require fast CPU to improve scaling right?

Vir · 26 Mar 2012 at 10:46

You know.... BF3 it almost doesn't matter if you have a i7 920 at 2.67 (like I also currently have) or at 4Ghz, look it up! "BF3 cpu scaling" in google for example.

Isn't it the case that you have to manually enable SLI? Every time I install a new NVIDIA driver I have to re-enable SLI...
Also maybe you should check the temperature of both cards, maybe they get to hot and throttle back?

Just a few thoughts

Mr. May · 26 Mar 2012 at 11:11

Got 2x7970's running average of 88fps and a minimum of 60fpsboth overclocked to CCC limits

Wucked · 26 Mar 2012 at 12:25

Throwing money at shinies in BF3 is lovely, but unnecessary. Most competitive players, even if their hardware is capable of ultra, run a mix of medium & low settings simply because it still looks great but makes it easier to ID targets. IMO ultra settings are best saved for single player games, especially in the FPS genre.

Saying that though, if anyone fancies buying me a 680 I promise I wont say no to it

And for single card configs the only two choices that have a chance at ultra are the 680 and 7970, both are beasts.

Macro · 26 Mar 2012 at 13:47

barjoysee said:
I haven't ruled out going back to ATI either can I ask you two quick questions then I take it you are saying you don't go below 60fps then at any point on ultra preset ?

Second question On my previous crossfired 5870's I used to get black screen problems in Battlefied bad company 2 which is why I decided to go with the green team this time.

Now on B3 on Firestorm I sometimes get it were all the bushes flicker in on and off texture wise. Do you get any graphics issues on your 7970's in any of the maps such as flickering ?

I can't claim to have tested FPS scientifically in all conditions but I tend to be quite sensitive to frame rate dropping (which is how I know even a O/C 7970 on it's own wasn't enough). Checking from time to time with Afterburner doing the FPS display I've not noticed it drop under 60fps and usually it's 80+. This is on 7970s with a very mild O/C to 1000/5700 on stock volts.

If I get a chance I'll do a run through some maps, keep an eye on the FPS and let you know. FWIW I would expect two 680s to possibly be even quicker as BF3 seems to generally perform a little better on nvidia. Having said that I've not dabbled with SLi for years so no idea if there's any potential challenges with it, I went crossfire just because (for me anyway) generally speaking it's just worked (with a couple of driver version release fubars).

You could probably get away with dual 7950s just fine with a little overclock and save a chunk of cash

Macro · 26 Mar 2012 at 13:52

Wucked said:
Throwing money at shinies in BF3 is lovely, but unnecessary. Most competitive players, even if their hardware is capable of ultra, run a mix of medium & low settings simply because it still looks great but makes it easier to ID targets. IMO ultra settings are best saved for single player games, especially in the FPS genre.

True enough, although I'm a sucker for shinies and as it looks like I'm going to be gaming at 1440p now there's bound to be other games that will take advantage of the cards for the next couple of years.

Expensive I know and there's bound to be better value for money ways of doing it but this should last me a couple of years now with the extra grunt and 3GB of VRAM standing me in good stead.

Take into account what I could get for them second hand if need be and it's not the end of the world (although granted, I'm lucky enough to be able to afford them in the first place without having to sell the kids).